Barbara Fradkin's Blog, page 164

The Dreaded Anachronism

Aline's blog about youthful slang hit a nerve with me. Nothing dates a book faster than slang. If you're paying attention, you can tell when the English-speaking characters lived just by their vocabulary. I am an historical novelist, so I don't have to worry about my dialog being dated before the book comes out. On the contrary, I'm always trying to figure out if my dialog, dialect, slang, is

It's so hard to keep your privacy these days

by Rick Blechta



Aline's post of yesterday was very timely for me (Thanks, Aline!) as I'm currently struggling with the same sort of thing, although with me, it's not current language usage/vocab but technical terms and new technology.

My current work-in-progress has posed some significant issues, the largest of which is that a major part of the plot revolves around hacking and illegal

Woke-up Call

Are you woke?  No, I'm not really asking you to sit up straight at the back there and pay attention.  As those of you who are down-there-with-the-kids will know - people like me, at least since last weekend - 'woke' means what we used to call 'with it' or even 'hip'.

Some of you guys may have noticed we had a big do over here then for our Harry and your Meghan and apparently they are 'woke'. 

When the Writer becomes the Teacher

How many of you teach writing? For a while, to pad my income, I actively sought writing gigs but backed off that because it was A) a lot of work finding gigs, and B) I didn't get a lot of interest. It was embarrassing touting myself as a "National Bestselling Author" and have zilch in terms of students signing up. I did have some success, don't get me wrong. I taught Writing the Graphic Novel at

Double Binds

A couple of weeks ago my oldest daughter participated in a dressage event. She and her horse, Roslyn, are a really elegant combination. A number of family members attended, the weather was perfect. It was delightful day, and doubly enjoyable because attending this show rather than something else was an easy choice.

We have a close and supportive extended family. It's one of my biggest

Scratching an itch

It’s how you determine which books become series. I call it “the itch.” It’s when the characters you were finished with –– or thought you were –– tap you on the shoulder and look at you with a head-cock and a smirk that tells you they know something you don’t: even if you thought you were done with them, they weren’t finished with you.

It’s how I wrote five novels set on the PGA tour and three

Going Down the GDPR Rabbit Hole

 I turned in my final edits to Designed For Haunting last week. The dedication and acknowledgments are done. So this week I decided to catch up on things like updating my website, creating discussion questions for book clubs for all of my books, and other such things I haven’t yet gotten around to.

I kept on hearing about the EU's new GDPR law so I thought I'd look into that as well and see what

Some fun for a Tuesday

by Rick Blechta

Well, I’m doing pretty poorly the past couple of weeks. Last week, I didn’t even remember it was Tuesday until 9:00 pm. This week, I’ve got too much on my plate and an overly-full brain to even consider writing a post.

But fear not, loyal readers!

What I do have on offer are three really good literarily-inspired cartoons. (I collect them for an occasion such as this.) I do

And a Good Time was Had by All

By Vicki Delany



As Donis posted a picture of me with her and Ann Parker in
Scottsdale on Thursday, let me follow up with my .02.


The Vicki Delany shelf at the Poisoned Pen




I was in Arizona last week for CozyCon at the Poisoned Pen
bookstore. It was an afternoon of nine authors, not all of whom are cozy
writers, but most were. As usual in a PP appearance we talked books, books and
more

Sunset Boulevard

This post will be short because it's end of semester and I'm in the midst of grading. I still have a pile of papers to read between now and Monday evening 11:59 when grades are due to the Registrar's Office. In between, this Saturday and Sunday, I will be joining fellow faculty members as we send our graduates out into the world -- to their joy.

But I want to speak in praise of the TCM project